In the field of production of light-sensitive materials for amateur's color photography, high sensitivity and reduced size formatting have been achieved, and it has become necessary to meet various requirements concerning silver halide light-sensitive materials for color photography which assure high sensitivity and high image quality.
To meet these requirements, many studies have been made on silver halide light-sensitive materials for color photography containing a chemical compound (hereinafter called the diffusible DIR compound) which reacts with oxidized product of the developing agent during development and liberates the diffusible development-inhibitor or its precursor. The techniques thus developed are now indispensable as a means of improving color reproducibility, sharpness, and graininess. On the other hand, Japanese patent application No. 214852-1984 and No. 170849-1985 through No. 170853-1985 disclose the techniques concerning use of silver halide emulsion containing fog nuclei combinedly with light-sensitive silver halide emulsion for improved sensitivity.
However, these techniques have led to a new problem because the above-mentioned diffusible DIR compound accumulates in the developing solution, resulting in deterioration of sensitivity and decrease of .gamma. in the repetitive processing (running). Therefore, a drastic improvement is being desired because there is a trend toward more coarse control of photographic processing with the increase of in-house processing. Also, use of the diffusible DIR compound involves an fundamental and intrinsic problem that sensitivity is greatly sacrificed by addition of the diffusible DIR compound to the light-sensitive material.
On the other hand, the fact that application of the silver halide emulsion containing fog nuclei greatly impairs sharpness has been barrier to practical use. Thus, various techniques have been studied and developed to achieve high sensitivity and high image quality, but there are heaps of technical problems yet to be solved. The present invention intends to eliminate the drawbacks which the above-mentioned DIR compound and silver halide emulsion containing fog nuclei have, and to provide silver halide light-sensitive materials with higher sensitivity and more excellent image quality.